“In the last month there has been a sea change in North Carolina,” said Jack Hawke, the Civitas president and a former state GOP chairman, in a luncheon in Raleigh on Wednesday. “In the last month it has turned even further in the Democrats’ direction.”

A sea change is a “profound transformation.” According to Michael Quinion in World Wide Words and The Mavens’ Word of the Day, the phrase comes from Shakespeare — appropriately, from “The Tempest.” Shakespeare speaks of a change “rich and strange.” Paul Brians makes the case that the phrase refers to a change that is large and sudden.

The phrase appears in this discussion of news media cliches that should be Banned for Life. The argument is that a mere change in politics is not the profound and miraculous change that Shakespeare wrote about.